Dr. Donna S. Havens has served as the interim dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2014. Her career has included a rich blend of roles in nursing practice, academe, administration, and research. She has been a tenured professor at the School since 2003.

From 2003 to 2006, Dr. Havens chaired the School of Nursing’s Health Care Environments Division. She came to UNC from the Pennsylvania State University School of Nursing, where she held the Ebberly Endowed Professorship and was part of a five-person leadership team who provided interim leadership to the School while a new dean was recruited.

Dr. Havens developed the Decisional Involvement Scale (DIS), which is used extensively in the U.S. and internationally to identify actual and preferred degrees of staff nurse involvement in workplace policy and practice decisions. Strengthening the staff nurse’s involvement in making decisions that improve the culture of the workplace is a key factor for improving nurse, patient, and organizational outcomes.

For more than 25 years, she has studied, published, consulted, and presented nationally and internationally about the nursing practice environment, nurse executive leadership and turnover, professional nursing practice, staff nurse decisional involvement, relational coordination, and Magnet hospitals.

Dr. Havens earned a diploma from the Grace New Haven School of Nursing at the Yale Medical Center, a BSN from Cedar Crest College, an MSN from Villanova University, and a PhD in Nursing from the University of Maryland focusing on health services research. She completed post-doctoral study on the organization of nursing and outcomes with Dr. Linda Aiken in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

She has served as principal investigator on multiple studies focused on improving nursing practice and patient care. Her most recent work includes several initiatives to translate research findings about the nursing practice environment and outcomes into evidence-based leadership and management to improve the quality of patient care and nursing practice in hospitals. These three HRSA-funded initiatives focused on improving communication and collaboration, staff nurse decisional involvement and her newest study is grounded in implementation science principles to enhance interprofessional collaborative practice in four rural Emergency Departments in rural NC hospitals.

Since 2012, she has held a Visiting Professorship at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s College London, where she has collaborated with colleagues in the National Nursing Research Unit.

She belongs to multiple policy boards, serving as the chair of the American Nurses Credentialing Center Commission on Magnet and chair of the American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel on “Building Health Care System Excellence.” She has also served on the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) Future Patient Care Delivery Committee and chaired the AONE Foundation Research Committee.

2015 Inaugural Visionary Pioneer Award, University of Maryland School of Nursing

2012 Pennsylvania Nightingale Award for Research Excellence

2011 The University of Maryland School of Nursing Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award

2009 The American Organization of Nurse Executives Nurse Researcher Award

2007 Best Podium Presentation Award, Designing Systems to Promote Desired Outcomes (How to Do It and How to Make it Stick) – A Model for Implementation. The International Nursing Administration Research Conference, Indianapolis IN, October, 2007

2005 American Journal of Nursing 2005 Book of the Year Award: Havens, D.S., Burton, D., Cadmus, E., Cox, K., Fuller, & J., Boyer, S., & (2005). Redesign of nursing work. In B. Cleary & B. Rice (Eds.). Nursing Workforce Development: Strategic State Initiatives. New York: Springer Publishing Company. ** Two AJN Book of the Year awards: 1) History and Public Policy and 2) Professional Development & Issues

2004 Fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing

2002 Villanova University 2002 Distinguished Contributions in Nursing Research Medallion

2002 The Julia Hardy Scholar Award, the American Nurses Foundation

1984 Phi Kappa Phi

1982 Sigma Theta Tau International

Select Publications

Articles in Refereed Journals

* Data based

*Yurek, L., Havens, D.S., Hayes S., and Hughes, L. (In press). Factorial validity of the Decisional Involvement Scale as a Measure of Content and Context of Nursing Practice. Research in Nursing & Health.

The Decisional Involvement Scale (DIS) – Havens, D.S., 1990. An instrument to assess staff nurse perceptions of actual and desired involvement in decisions about nursing practice and patient care. Since publication in June of 2003, permission to use has been requested to use the DIS by more than 200 hospitals, hospital systems, researchers, consultants, graduate students, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and the AONE T-CAB project.

Havens, D.S. (PI). A Comparison of the Organizational Attributes of Hospitals Known for Excellence - Magnet Hospitals - Selected by Two Methods: A National Reputational Study by Experts and Self-Nomination and Evaluation by the ANCC. The American Nurses’ Foundation. 1998, $3,500. Funded.

Havens, D.S. (Co-PI). Nurse Perceptions of Work Empowerment Testing Kanter’s Theory. The University of Western Ontario Sabbatical Research Grant and the Vice President’s Special Competition. Heather Spence Laschinger (PI), 1994-1995, $1,400. Funded.

Havens, D.S. (PI). Analysis of Implementation of Features of Professional Nursing Practice Models in Acute Care General Hospitals Across the United States (replication of dissertation), 1994. Funded by the Duke University School of Nursing, $3,000.

Havens, D.S. (Project Director). Evaluation of Organizational Change at the Duke University Medical Center. Duke University Medical Center 1991-1993. Funded by the Duke University Medical Center Department of Nursing, $30,000.